Crafting My Time

Yikes! Yes I need to use the daylight lamp when taking pictures.

This is the restart of the birth announcement for the second child of K and S. 

I didn't like the original fabric so I started over.

We should find out if this is for a niece or a nephew this week.

I can't wait!

This is my other project.

It is a Heaven and Earth Design called Faux Fabulous.

It isn't a full wall-to-wall design like a lot of the HAEDs, but there are 89 colors and it will probably take me eight years to finish.

Just kidding. I hope.

It will be fun, I like funky frogs.

I basted and marked some points of reference to get started.

I will be starting the project on March 1st with a group of other stitchers from all around the world.
We are all planning on starting similar large projects at the same time.

Internet groups are great!
I have discovered new ways of stitching, new inspiration for projects, and lots of new fun people.

This is one of my new things. 

An ORT jar. 

Old Ratty Tails

Why go to all of the trouble of making little piles of thread tails on the arm of your chair when you can have a cool ORT jar to put them in.

I don't know for sure where I got this one, might have been part of FabHub's stash when we got married, but now it has a purpose.

I plan on putting the strings out for the birds.

They should make some colorful nests.

That is my craft update for the now. Later.

Signs of Spring

It was beautiful out today so I went out looking for signs of spring.

The first thing I found was this very pale crocus mixed in with leaves for hyacinths and tulips. 

Then I found some chrysanthemums starting to green up. 

The daffodils are thick again. I separated them a couple of years ago. There are a bunch of tulips in this bed too. We shall see if they survived the moles and squirrels.

Then I got busy and cleaned out the front flower bed. Mostly anyway. 

The mums are growing and the peonies are peeking out of the ground.

FabHub has been busy too.

He is getting ready to change this road up to the barn so he had to clean all of his "stuff" out of the hole on the left there next to the garage.

Somehow it all ended up on the trailer and on the end of my garden. 

He said he needed an out of the way flat spot. 

I said that spot didn't need to be any flatter.

 I lost.

Then he got to work fixing a round bale feeder that the cows had torn up.

Did you notice Old Blue is back?!

Ok, you probably didn't know it was gone.

After FabHub bought his new truck, the BIL's truck had a major problem.

Since Old Blue is still road worthy they traded farm trucks for a while so that BIL could still get to work.

He got his new truck now so the beast is back.

That's all the farm news for now. Later.

Making some changes

I saw a blog where someone had added tabs to the top of their page. I thought that was awesome since I share so many varieties of subjects on this site.

So I have added the feature here.

The newest blog is always under Home and the newest of each subject is first under each tab. Yay!

Starting the New Baby Gift

I finally got started on the Birth Announcement.

Can you tell what pattern it is yet?

I know, probably not and since this is a gift that is the secret for a while.

I am sure some of you CCS fans out there can see where I have already done some "frogging" (rip it, rip it out). I got started and then realized I needed to move the whole thing to the left five spaces.

The pattern is intended for 28 count Monaco 2 over 2. I had a package of 12x18 Charles Craft 22 count Hardanger in my stash and figured I could make it work. Then I did the graph on and realized the fabric was pretty small, but since I will be attaching another fabric to the edges anyway to make the album cover I don't need extra space for framing.

Then I got started and after the first section was done realized I had measured out 101 stitches instead of 111 and since my sides are so tight, I decided to move everything to the left a bit.

This is what I meant by album cover. I have shown it before, but I am really happy with it.

On this album I attached the pattern to a denim type fabric "pocket" that slides over an expandable photo album. I thought it might make a much longer lasting memento as it can be filled with pictures over time instead of just hanging on the wall.

So that is my project as of today. I will post updates and hope to be quick about it. July is coming soon!